


Sherlock Holmes and the Six Nathaniels

by MagdaTheMagpie



Series: Deductions and a Touch of Magic [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magic, Magical Creature, Obliviation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 05:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14513217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagdaTheMagpie/pseuds/MagdaTheMagpie
Summary: Sherlock doesn’t know much about children, but he’s sure they’re not supposed to multiply and disappear.





	Sherlock Holmes and the Six Nathaniels

 

John is chasing Roonil around the flat with the hairbrush he’s just bought at the pet store. He’s given up on the idea of giving their pet a bath, despite it starting to smell like an old goat, because he’s half-made of paper and that can’t end well. But he could at least cooperate with a little dusting off. It’s only a hairbrush for God’s sake, but the little monster acts as if he’s pointing a bazooka his way.

“Roonil! Come on, you stinky little bugger. Please? I’ll give you one of Sherlock’s italian leather shoes to nibble.”

“I don’t think so,” comes Sherlock’s icy voice from the couch where he’s lounging.

He’s been so still and quiet for such a long time that John forgot he was even there.

“You wouldn’t even have noticed,” John replies with a chuckle. “You have more shoes than you could ever hope to wear.”

_ More than any woman I know _ .

Sherlock narrows his eyes at him as if he heard his thoughts, suddenly swipes his arm down over the wooden parquet and extends it back up holding a squirming monster-book by the spine, its papery jaws snapping ineffectually in the air.

“Roonil!” John exclaims with wonder at Sherlock’s reflexes.

John grabs their pet and struggles to hold it close. Roonil has gotten more docile since they’ve captured it and he would only occasionally give them paper-cuts when it was particularly warranted, like that time John hoovered him as he was napping under his chair or when Sherlock had plucked one of his wiry hairs for an experiment, but John isn’t going to risk his fingers for a hairbrush. He starts stroking Roonil with it, slowly and gently, dust falling off in opaque clouds until he stops squirming and holds still, more book than monster.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

“Interesting,” he comments, and John can already see his genius planning any number of experiments on poor Roonil.

“Sorry,” he whispers to it just as Sherlock’s phone beeps. 

Roonil slithers out of his arms and scuttles off into a dark corner behind piles of books and boxes. John glowers at Sherlock's phone. He's never going to convince him to come out of his hidey hole now.

“I hope it's good,” he mutters. 

It has to be Lestrade since no one else texts him. Mycroft makes a point of calling, because Sherlock hates it and Mrs Hudson… well, John isn't sure she actually knows how to text. He’s the only other person who text Sherlock, extensively, so it has to be Lestrade with a case.

“I doubt it,” he says and turns his phone off without replying.

A minute later, his phone chimes again, and once more a few seconds later. Sherlock reads the new text and smiles.

“That’s more like it! One day, he’ll learn to get straight to the point,” he says and jumps to his feet, tosses his phone at John and leaves for their bedroom in a flurry of blue silk.

Shaking his head, John unlocks the phone and reads the last messages. Not from Lestrade… John groans, thinking  _ there’s always something!  _ The last two texts are from D.I Dimmock. The eager detective who looks far too young to be doing such a job. They don’t work all that often with him but John shouldn’t have dismissed him out of hand as he only contacts them on the most interesting cases.

 

**Care to help me with a case? It’s very very confusing. -Dimmock**

 

**A child or six disappeared. No one is sure which exactly. -Dimmock**

 

**And by disappeared, I mean vanished into thin air in front of witnesses. -Dimmock**

 

**Agreed. -SH**

 

The phone chimes in his hands and he’s so surprised, he flings it in the air where it makes a graceful salto before catching it again. John sighs in relief. Sherlock is unbearable when he’s without a phone. He remembers to check the last message.

 

**Thank you so so much. 104 Southgate Road. -Dimmock**

 

John’s eyebrows furrow in thought. That’s near Rosemary Gardens, not too far from their flat. However, they’d still have to take a cab if they wanted to be there quickly. Sherlock returns in one of his darkest suits and John has an urge to rip it off him anew before he remembers there’s a kid, or six of them, who need their help. As if he knows exactly what went through his mind, Sherlock kisses him as he pockets his phone and growls a sinful “Later.” at him that promises love bites, lube and lack of sleep.

 

“So what’s your first impression?” John asks during the cab ride.

“I haven’t even seen the crime scene yet, John,” he replies, his eyes crinkling.

“I’ve seen you solve a case with just a text before. It’s just that it’s strange, right?”

Sherlock nods. 

“You’re probably thinking along the same lines I am. Before…” and Sherlock doesn’t need to explain it’s before they discovered magic existed, as well as a whole society of magic users hiding away somewhere right under their noses. “There is really only two possible explanations. One, it’s an elaborate prank, or two…”

Sherlock grins, excited at the prospect of finding more magic. Maybe add another item to their magic collection after the shrinking mints and their monster-book turned pet. Sherlock is still peeved the magical people took away the magic broom. John is sure Sherlock had planned to glue it back together to hang over their chimney. Funnily enough, he's sure no one would have commented about it, because they already have a human skull on the chimney’s mantle, a couple of rusty swords and a bison’s head wearing headphones on their walls, so maybe it wouldn't really stand out that much. Roonil, for his part, is smart enough to stay out of view when they have visitors, except when said visitor tries to harm either of them, in which case they usually bleed out from the sheer amount of papercuts they receive.

John wonders what they might find this time and he’s grinning just as wide as Sherlock. It could be… anything! It’s magic!

 

“Mr Holmes, Dr Watson! Thank you so much for coming,” Dimmock greets them warmly.

He looks like an excitable puppy but John shakes his hand good-naturedly while Sherlock stares down his nose at him.

“Yes. You said already. Now stop wasting my time and explain what is going on here.”

Dimmock leads them to a school. Inside, past the massive dark doors, it’s utter and complete chaos. Children are crying and there isn’t half enough adults around to get everyone in order, not to mention most of the officers present look terrified at the very idea of approaching snotty kids bawling their eyes out. The scene is enough to immediately dispel the euphorie John had been riding since receiving their summons.

“Can’t you call for backup?” Sherlock snipes at the inspector and he almost has to shout to make himself heard. “How do you expect me to work in this… pandemonium?”

John snorts at his choice of words while Dimmock babbles an apology.

“We’re already stretched thin. I shouldn’t even be taking this case, so this is all the backup I have until the kids’ parents arrive.”

Sherlock glances at his watch, sighs, and turns around to go back in the street so they can at least be heard while they talk.

“Explain.”

“Well, like I said, it’s complicated. Confusing, really. The Year 5 teacher called us in about a child's disappearance… Nathaniel Smith.”

“So, just the one child?”

“Well… Before he disappeared, in front of his whole class mind you, there were six Nathaniel Smiths in one place instead of just the one… exact copies, like sixtuplets…  I… uhm… I have no idea what to do. I wouldn’t even be opening an investigation if it wasn’t for the fact that a Nathaniel Smith does effectively attend this school and that he is currently missing.”

“What about the teacher? Alcohol? Drugs? Moron?”

“Not that I can tell. And the problem is that his whole class gives us the same testimony. Granted they’re kids, but you’ve seen what state they’re in… If this kid somehow managed to play a prank on his classmates, he must be a ruddy Houdini.”

“Who?” Sherlock asks.

John shakes his head at Dimmock who looked like he might attempt to explain who that was.

“Pop culture, Sherlock.”

Sherlock hums. Dimmock fidgets. John is waiting patiently on the side when he suddenly notices something is wrong. Awfully, terribly wrong. The cacophony of shouts and cries that had still been drifting through the massive doors a moment ago has stopped. Not tapered off, but brutally cut off. All the hairs on his body stand on end at the realization.

“Fuck!” John curses under his breath.

He pulls both Sherlock and Dimmock out of view, behind a van which double parked for a delivery. He places a hand on both their mouths because they looked about to protest, then glances around the van. He's not surprised to see a man’s upper half pop out of the entrance, scan the area then close the door. It wouldn't be suspicious if he wasn't clad in a long red leather coat that looks utterly ridiculous, but most notably, he was holding a wand. A friggin wand! He's sure of it. Well, to be honest it looked like a simple, gnarly stick, but why else would he have been holding it out in front of him like that. Like a weapon. John lets go of the two men.

“What in heaven's-” 

“John?”

“Remember what happened at the morgue and the Yard last time?” John asks. “The erasing?”

Sherlock's nods and peaks over the van.

“What?” Dimmock repeats.

“You should have let them have him,” Sherlock says. “I'm not explaining. He won't believe us and it’s boring to convince people of the impossible.”

“What?” Dimmock repeats. 

John bites his lip and wonders if Sherlock isn't right. It just hadn't felt right to leave Dimmock to the wand users when it was easier to take him along. Besides, he might have given them away, which he tells Sherlock. 

“If they do as shoddy a job as last time, it's unlikely,” Sherlock argues. “The door just reopened. I'm guessing the coast is clear. It took them three minutes and thirty-six seconds. Let's see the result.”

They don't walk into the school, they infiltrate it, just in case. Dimmock still doesn't understand but he tags along. Unnecessary caution as it turns out. Teachers and students are in class, and there is a mildly confused group of police officers in the entrance hallway asking about a call for vandalism. There is, in fact, a broken window right in the entrance which wasn't there when they'd last been, but it's not a reason to call Scotland Yard and it’s not even their division. It’s interesting because not only can these magical people erase memories as they’ve witnessed before, but they can implant new, false memories. It would be more worrying if they hadn’t missed witnesses or used such a lame excuse as vandalism.

“Amateurs,” Sherlock snorts and John can only agree.

Dimmock goes fishing for information, the poor man is completely at Sherlock’s beck and call, and he returns shaking his head. He's sent his men back and checked with the school about one Nathaniel Smith: he still attends this school but wasn't here today on account of being home sick. 

“I'll give you his address if one of you tells me what the bloody fuck is going on here!”

John is secretly pleased to see the man has finally snapped and seems to have some backbone to him, but still, Sherlock can’t be bothered. He wants the address though, so it’s up to John to explain what they think is happening. Of course, Dimmock doesn’t believe him. He turns to Sherlock who raises a sardonic eyebrow.

“But… what do I do?” Dimmock asks.

“Nothing,” Sherlock says simply. “Although I suppose you could pray they don’t come after you.”

Sherlock walks off and John swears he can see his shoulders shaking under that great coat of his. Is he laughing at Dimmock’s predicament? That’s… a bit not good. The young D.I. isn’t Lestrade but he’s not so bad as far as Yarders go. Worse thing is, Sherlock is probably right. John pats the poor man on the shoulder and runs off after Sherlock to tell him off about spooking impressionable policemen.

 

They are just as cautious when they arrive in front of the building where Nathaniel Smith lives but so far, they haven’t noticed any unusual activity. The letterbox in the hall informs them Nathaniel lives alone with his mother or another female family member by the same name. Smith is awfully common but Sherlock never guesses so there must be another clue that John can’t see. Finally, they take the direct approach and knock on their door.

The woman who opens looks wary but doesn’t look magical at all: no wand and no weird clothing.

“What do you want?” shes says peering through a crack in the door.

“Child services,” Sherlock announces flashing a card which John has no idea who he stole from. The woman sighs, letting her guard down and a cat takes the opportunity to slither its way out the half open door, rubs against their legs as it twines between them, then meows before returning inside.

“That’s a… friendly cat you’ve got there, Mrs Smith,” John says.

He’s not a cat person himself but he knows cat owners, like Molly, love to talk about their clawed little demons for some reason. He supposes he would do the same if he could talk about Roonil, but no one would believe him.

“Yes,” she says and her voice is softer now as she opens the door to invite them in. “He’s very smart too. A good judge of character.”

John nods his head wisely. Molly always says that about her cats too.

“How may I help you?” she asks when they’re all seated.

Sherlock has been looking around, keeping to himself as he deduces their life from the details lying about, but he speaks up now.

“You son, Nathaniel, has been absent at school today and it’s come to our attention it happens quite a lot. We just want to make sure everything is alright at home.”

_ Nice one _ , John thinks, watching as the woman flinches.

“He’s just got a weaker constitution than most,” her mother says. “He’s resting in his room right now. I can assure you Nate is happy and well taken care of. I love my son, I wouldn’t let any harm come to him.”

“May we see him?” Sherlock asks.

John is sure he can’t wait to lay his eyes on a magical person, but he wonders if they’re wrong because his mother looks so completely normal. Maybe he isn’t magical at all, maybe he just ate a bad candy like their shrinking mints. Only this one makes doubles of yourself before turning you transparent, or teleporting you back home or whatever the hell happened to the kid.

The mother hesitates, but nods and leads them down a narrow corridor to a door with a hand-drawn sign indicating this is NATHANIEL’S ROOM (no girls allowed!).

“Good thing we’re blokes then or that would be the end of our investigation,” John comments. “I bet Donovan would have lectured the poor kid though.”

Sherlock snorts while the mother knocks sharply on the door before opening it.

“Nate? There are two gentlemen here to see if you’re alright.”

John leans to the side, catching sight of the gangly boy with dark curly hair like Sherlock’s and grey eyes which go wide as he looks them over before relaxing. Strange that. They don’t look threatening, but kids don’t usually relax when strange men come talking to them.

“Is it because I missed school?”

“Indeed,” Sherlocks says. “Just to make sure you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” Nathaniel says with a shrug as he continues playing with a large T-rex toy.

“So why aren’t you at school?” Sherlock asks with a smug smile.

Yep, the kid fell right into that one. Easy pickings for Sherlock. Nathaniel looks pleadingly at his mother.

“He means he’s better. He was pretty sick this morning,” she says. Both of them are terrible liars. Worse than him, which is saying a lot.

“I’d say,” Sherlock say absently as his eyes scan every little thing in the bedroom, trying no doubt to find something magical. He doesn’t seem successful however because he goes on the offensive instead. “Making five copies of yourself must be pretty exhausting.”

The mother tenses and steps in between them and her son.

“Who are you?” she hisses.

“Concerned citizens?” Sherlock offers.

“More like curious citizens,” John can't help but correct.

Mrs Smith just looks at them blankly but apparently, their lack of pitchforks, wands or animosity is enough for her relax.

“You're not magical?”

“No, but we are aware they exist.”

“And they haven't caught you yet?”

“You think they will?”

“They always pop up whenever Nathaniel does something… er… unusual.”

“Were mostly just very lucky,” John explains. “So your son is one of them?”

The mother looks between her child and them before pursuing her lips.

“I'm not allowed to talk about it. There are rules and I don't want any trouble. He only has me. Could you please just leave?”

She's very polite about it, but Sherlock must read something about her that tells him she will not yield, so he gives Nathaniel the magical boy one last considering look then turns on his heels.

“Thank you, Mrs Smith. Sorry for the bother,” John says over his shoulder as he hurries up to catch up to Sherlock and his infernally long legs.

Sherlock is brooding in the cab on the way home. John sympathises. They finally find a real magic user, only for him to be a kid with an overprotective mother. Still, she said there were rules and the two of them were clearly breaking them. They shouldn't know about this magical world but had so far evaded their memory erasing process because of a singular string of events. There had to be others like them out there who knew about magic but couldn't talk about it to anyone, apart from non magical parents of magical children. He wondered, from a medical point of view, how that came to be. A genetic quirk? Clearly not a dominant one or there would be a lot more magical children causing incidents like today and given how poor the cover up was, surely such extraordinary happenings would have leaked before… or maybe no one would believe it except for first hand witnesses. After all, if say Lestrade had told him Donovan had shrunk one day and he'd carried her in his pocket all day, he wouldn't have believed him despite knowing he wasn’t prone to drinking or fibbing. Only the fact that it had been him finding the thumb sized Sherlock had made John believe in magic in the first place.

“John?”

“Uhm?”

“We’re here,” Sherlock says and John can see the door to 221B through the window. “I'm going to need you to have your wits about you. I do believe we will have visitors soon.”

 

As usual, Sherlock was right. It stood to reason they would be found out soon. They'd had too many brushes with the magical people when they erased the magical events from the minds of witnesses, and they had two magical artefacts in their possession, one of them being half alive.

“You have clients, Sherlock!” Mrs Hudson hollers as she sends them up.

Sherlock takes one look at them, then nods at him. This is it then. The two men look normal enough, they’re wearing normal clothes at least, and they accept a cup of tea with all the politeness of well bred gentlemen. John wouldn't have know any better if Sherlock had not warned him they were wizards beforehand.

“I’d ask how I can help you, but we all know you're not here to hire me,” Sherlock says blithely.

John snorts at the look of astonishment on their visitors faces and takes a sip of tea as he sits back to enjoy the show. He has his gun close at hand between the cushions, just in case. He won't let them mess with Sherlock's Mind Palace. Who knows how their erasing will affect a mind like Sherlock's.

“I thought you said they were Muggles,” the blond one hisses at the other.

“They are!” the one with the dark messy hair hisses back.

“I hate to disrupt your little domestic,” Sherlock says, not sorry at all, “Is Muggle what you call non-magicals?”

The blond makes an exasperated gesture at the other like “See what I mean?” and the other shrugs. They are rather cute together but there is a palpable tension between them that makes him think they're no actually a couple. Not yet anyway.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Sherlock continues, undeterred. “I also know you are here to erase our minds of what happened at the school on Southgate, or maybe even after what happened to our Minister of Transport in the forest, quite messy that, but I have to warn you against using such drastic measures on us.”

“Why is that?” the blond sneers and his hand disappears suspiciously in his sleeve.

John cocks his gun, pointing it in the pale face of the blond man facing him.

“First of all, because I will blow your brains out if you try” 

It's a lie. John wouldn't go that far, maybe just graze an ear to get his point across. He would even patch them up before sending them home. However the blond doesn't react. His companion does however, tenses as he sits further back in his seat so John aims at him instead. Sherlock approves with a small nod.

“Is that supposed to scare me?” the blond says as he takes out his wand.

So he had been right, that's where they hide their wands.

“Malfoy!” the dark haired one snaps and lowers the other's wand with his hand, moving slowly as he keeps his eyes on the gun.

“What?”

“Have you not read the memos our department gave yours?”

The blank look he receives says it all.

“About modern Muggle weapons?”

“It's just muggles.”

The dark haired one rolls his eyes.

“That thing is a gun, it can kill you as surely as an Avada Kedavra and only takes a second to shoot. Can you cast a spell under a second?”

The blond, Malfoy, pales, which is quite a feat given how very pale he was to begin with. But the point got across at least, so John readjusts his aim on this Malfoy fellow as he is the most belligerent of the two.

“This is highly irregular,” the other says with a frown.

“Indeed,” Sherlock agrees. “But now that we've got the immediate danger of mind erasing out of the way, let me inform you that this meeting is being filmed and streamed safely onto the cloud and it will be sent out to a third party if we happen to forget about magic and thus, the recording.”

There's an ominous silence at that declaration. Threat really, but they started it.

“I didn't get any of that,” Malfoy says. “It's like they speaking gobbledygook.”

Not surprising if he didn't even know what a gun was. All eyes shift to the other wizard who scratches his head.

“Yeah, sorry. That went a bit over my head too.”

John can't help it. He laughs, then tells them to drink their tea before it gets cold. He'd figured as much when Sherlock had told him they hadn't even deleted the texts sent between Greg and them during the Broom case, or used said texts to find Sherlock. So John tries to explain the situation with simple words as he would to a five year old, concluding how they're basically screwed if they try messing with them.

“What do we do?” Malfoy hisses as if John and Sherlock can’t hear them from across the table..

“How the hell am I supposed to know? There’s no protocol for this! It's never happened before!”

“But you grew up with muggles. Isn't there anything we can do?”

“Do you have any idea how fast their technology evolves? They have phones in their pockets,” the black haired one mutters with a wave at Sherlock's phone lying on the table between them. “It's basically an owl, a library, a camera, maps, a radio, a television and I don't even know what else and it fits in their pockets!”

The blond looks interested for once, glancing at the sleek smartphone lying innocently on the table when he suddenly yelps and holds his calf with both hands.

“Roonil!” John scolds when he sees their pet scamper back behind the curtains and he would have sworn the sound he was making was like laughter. “Sorry about that. He doesn't usually attack without good reason.”

“Roonil?” the dark haired wizard asks with a tilt of the head. “Was that the Monster Book of Monsters? How the hell did you get it?”

“Saved it from an underground tube station. It was feeding on the passengers,” Sherlock says flatly. “It's ours now, you can't have it.”

The dark haired wizard is fighting back a smile.

“Don't worry. I doubt its former owner wants it back anyway.”

“How in Merlin's name do you know who that bloody thing belongs to?” Malfoy snaps.

“Roonil Wazlib… It's Ron’s. It ate its way out of his trunk on the trip back during our third year and I suppose it escaped into King's Cross Station.”

“Figures,” Malfoy mutters as he rubs his leg.

“What do you feed it? I've never seen one that big,” the other asks.

“Shoes, mostly,” John answers. “He has a preference for expensive Italian leather.”

The wizard’s green eyes are positively twinkling behind his glasses and John smiles at him before lowering his gun. It looks like they've reached a truce.

“I don't suppose you'd like to work for us?” he says.

“Potter! You can't just hire Muggles!” Malfoy exclaims.

“Don't you know how the Muggle Liaison Office works at all?”

Malfoy shrugs. It looks like he really has a dislike of all things Muggle, which is weird since it has to be most of the world.

“We already work with high-ranking Muggles and a few others are on our payroll. We don't have enough manpower or knowledge not to hire muggles in the know. What's two more?”

Malfoy is pouting like the overgrown spoiled child he seems to be. He actually reminds John of Sherlock in some ways. He sizes up this Potter bloke and wonders how alike he and him are. John noticed Potter had this look in his eyes when he pointed his gun at him, this steely determination not to bend, yet he is a bottomless pit of patience when dealing with his friend. It’s a bit like seeing a mirror image of themselves, albeit distorted.

“What would this job entail?” Sherlock asks, unable to hide his interest. John already knows he'll accept if it means he can weasel his way into the magical community.

“As you've seen, magic sometimes leaks into the Muggle world: accidental magic, artefacts, pranks or less savoury spells used on unsuspecting muggles, but it can also be theft or murder. I'm not going to lie, we have our criminals, just like you do, and with magic, preying on muggles is easy peasy. You're a private detective, right?”

“Consulting detective,” Sherlock corrects and Potter grins.

“Perfect. You'll consult for us. Either we come to you with a case or you come to us when a magical incident comes to your attention. Pay is not bad and it means you'll avoid getting obliviated and can keep… erm, Roonil.”

Sherlock is almost grinning. It's too good to be true.

“I'll set up an appointment for you with the Muggle Liaison Office to prepare your contracts. A friend of mine is heading it. She's muggleborn and will be overjoyed to have two more Muggles to work with.”

Sherlock stands and extends a hand.

“It's a deal.”

Potter shakes it and turns to his companion.

“There. Problem solved.”

  
  



End file.
